


Five times the Master didn't return (but once is all it takes)

by dagonst



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:24:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagonst/pseuds/dagonst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor crosses paths with the Master every so often, but it's never quite for real.  (Doctors Nine through Eleven; Simm!Master.  Gen except for that one time.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Phantom; Message Received; Last Wishes

### 1\. Phantom

_(Nine, before Rose)_

He saw the Master once, in San Francisco, in the first days after the war. Before he realized the enormity of what he’d done. Before he knew they were all gone, every one of them locked away forever, good riddance. He barely remembers now. It was dark and he was walking uphill, and the Master walked past him. All in black, as he had been when the Doctor was last exiled here. He remembers grabbing for the Master’s sleeve and somehow missing him, and turning to see his back, fading in the night. He wouldn’t see any of them again.

### 2\. Message Received

_(Ten, after Evolution of the Daleks)_

He tries not to steal from museums, but there are some things he can’t help. Things that belong to him. Like the Dalek message case he finds in an art museum on Tychon Six. Someone’s floated it six inches above a pedestal with a spin and called it something pretentious like Memory or Potential or -

\- Bad Wolf. 

So he has to have it. The universe echoes, and this was meant for him, even if Martha will think less of him for just grabbing it. He tucks it under his arm and then takes her hand (she takes the cue so beautifully). They walk casually towards the doors and then barrel through once the alarms start.

Martha locks the door and he gets the Tardis out of park. “What did you take that for? Is it a bomb? An alien bomb?” 

“It’s a message.” It’s too complicated to explain how the message from the Daleks is a message from Rose too. And anyway, Rose belongs to him, not to Martha. 

The case is old, from early in the war or even before, but the Doctor still takes a nasty pleasure in breaking their seals and encryptions. A pleasure that ebbs as soon as it starts playing. A report on the trial of a renegade Time Lord, from before the Daleks overreached themselves. This is what Rose thought he would want to see.

And because it was Rose, he watches. The Master in his arrogance, doing himself no favors. A paragon of the species in his way, which neither Rose nor Martha could appreciate since they’ve only known him. There’s the execution, documented through the skewed lens of Dalek armor. He hadn’t known that they had studied the corpse, in gut-churning detail, before incinerating it. Martha steels herself, audibly horrified. He watches himself collecting the ashes, presented as a defeat for the decadent, feeble Time Lord race. Dalek propaganda at its finest. 

The footage loops back to the beginning , showing the Master whole and unburnt. “Thank you, Rose,” he mutters, reaching to cut it off. Because he should be grateful for warnings, even the late ones. Even warnings that rub at the raw wounds from the Cult of Skaro’s inability to imagine change, and his inability to save anyone he hasn’t only just met. 

“You were a fool and got what you deserved,” he tells the image of the Master. The Master sneers at his judges, so perfectly on cue that it startles him into laughter. Martha stares, because she’s just seen the man vivisected and doesn’t know he survived it. Or perhaps that would be worse. He shuts the case and ends the broadcast, and hurls the thing into a star. Message received, ashes to ashes, alone again.

### 3\. Last Wishes

_(Ten, after Last of the Time Lords)_

He went back. After the ashes are cold, before the next rain. Four months for him, it took that long to decide that petty revenge isn’t the end he wants.

It’s not his most thorough work, but the Doctor a box full of ash and cinders. The Master’s first last wish was to be taken home to Gallifrey, which can’t be done now. He can’t think of a single place in the galaxy where the Master ever looked at home or seemed happy. Except the Valiant, mid-paradox. The Master was mad, beyond question, but he danced. There’s no solution in that, unless he wants to tip the Master’s ashes into the Time Vortex and he’s not that reckless.

The Master’s final last wish was to win, to evade the Doctor and the Doctor’s plans. So for now he’s getting the last thing he ever wanted, traveling with the Doctor indefinitely. “We’re stuck with each other after all,” he tells the box. “Unless you have a better plan.”

It’s no Pandoricum, this box. It’s wood; the Doctor bought it in a shop in London, and carved ragged circles into the lid. “Master,” it says for the one person in the universe who can read it, and “do not open.” He sets it on a high shelf in the library, next to the Gibbons, and shelves his memories with it, and forgets that he’s waiting for it to open itself.


	2. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the Doctor dreams that he’s the one shackled to dying, mad Gallifrey. Tonight the drums echo, the drumbeat and the awareness of the beat. As though he isn't alone. Eleven, Simm!Master, after End of Time.

The Doctor has had this nightmare before - that he’s the one shackled to dying, mad Gallifrey. Sometimes he wakes exhausted, knowing he must have listened to drumming all night. Tonight they echo the way they did when he heard them first, through the Master’s thoughts. The drumbeat and the awareness of the beat, nearly in sync. As though he isn’t alone. 

The drums deafen him as he moves, leave him unable to see the Master or a way out or complete a simple thought. By instinct he translates his sense of the Master’s mind into something comprehensible, that he can see and hear and touch. 

The mindscape is only as good as the minds constructing it, only as accurate as those minds can make it. And the Doctor’s done badly, working alone. The Master’s mind was always buildings, labyrinths. Occasionally a severely-groomed hedge. He sees now a featureless plain under orange sky. Turns around to see the Master - in his first incarnation, still in Academy robes, appallingly young. Leaning over a pool of water, like Earth’s Narcissus myth. It’s the Doctor’s mind creating the image: he’s not surprised when Koschei doesn’t notice him.

He walks over, the earth cracking and giving beneath him, the trail of footsteps implying further damage. Looks over the boy’s shoulder, and then does exactly the impulsive, unconsidered thing that you’re never, ever to do inside someone else’s mind.

He hauls the Master away, back a good damn ten feet. The Untempered Schism swirls in the depths of the pool. The drums. The Master stands wooden, absent, blank - because the Doctor doesn’t know what he’s done.

“Doctor.” The voice is dust, distant, no connection with the man he’s gotten hold of. He looks around, finds nothing new.

“Master! Are you here? Good. Here you are. Are you - can you see?” The Master’s still facing the pool, he realizes. Still staring. 

“You’re here. I see you.” He used to be brilliant at this. They were, together. Long ago, and before.

“Then see what I’m seeing. Before you shove me out. Come and look.” Speech isn’t just breath here; the knowledge follows the words, showing the Master how to find him here. More complicated, more dangerous, the Master moving into the Doctor’s mind to find the construct he’s made. The nightmare, the Master’s mind, the Doctor’s, an egg. 

Night falls quickly, with no moons. The sky is Gallifrey’s, every star in place; the boy who became the Master was exact in his constructions. The Untempered Schism glows violently; even at this distance, it casts their shadows against the faintly reflective sand. The real Schism let nothing escape; what’s here is only a symbol. And the Master steps sideways, out of the Doctor’s hands.

He’s himself now, his last body, a living face. Looking at the footprints now, and frowning. He half-turns to look the Doctor over, and the Schism still pulses in his eyes. “You were kneeling,” the Doctor says shortly, all the apology he’ll be getting.

“Oh.” He looks back at the pool, slowly turning to face it. The Doctor sees the Schism glow through him, in pieces, his face flickering off altogether. Hollowing him out, bit by bit. He doesn’t seem to realize.

“Help me stop it,” the Doctor says. “Please let me help.”

The Master laughs at him. “At least there aren’t Daleks.” 

The Doctor’s smile disappears before the Master’s, this time. War would be a more fitting concept. Better than this barren excuse for a landscape that the Master’s done nothing to correct. Or it could be he got it right, and this is all that’s left of the Master’s mind, all smashed to dust by the drums.

And the Master, standing still, flayed by the Schism. Still entranced. 

“Master, listen.” He pulls him away again, out of the Schism’s line of sight, and thinks aloud about the rules of this dream. Hoping to keep the Master’s attention here, in his mindscape. “It’s a signal, yes? A path back to the Time War, a path out of the Time War. Gallifrey went back and you went with it. But I remember the drums, I heard them too. It’s caught you between us. That’s why it’s worse. So -” But the Master doesn’t fight himself. Six _billion_ copies of the Master, and they all got along. The last two will cooperate to destroy him entirely.

“Yes. So. There’s no coming out - thanks for that - so I’m to be drawn in. Annihilated.” The real Master couldn’t have reasoned that out so calmly. He’d never stopped trying to live, except to spite the Doctor.

“Unless the link is smashed. I can - not the Schism itself, but the Eye of Harmony. I did it before.” He’s stammering like a child, and can’t think why.

The Master reaches for his hand, takes the device he hadn’t noticed he was holding. It’s bigger than a sonic screwdriver, by a little. “You’re offering to destroy the Eye of Harmony. _Inside my mind _, Doctor.” He’s backed away from the Doctor, out of reach. Closer to the Schism, so when the drums pull him in there will be nothing to do but watch.__

__“But it’s the only way.”_ _

__“No, it only means there is no way. Anyway, this thing won’t work. You don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing.” He holds up the device - grenade, really. Wiggles it. “Cargo-cult only goes so far.”_ _

__And if the Master doesn’t believe it will, if neither of them believe it could, it won’t. The Doctor closes his eyes, takes a step backward. One, two, three and he’ll be out of the Master’s mind._ _

__“What happens to me, Doctor?”_ _

__The Doctor opens his eyes. At this distance, he looks like Harry Saxon again. Like Koschei. The Master asked him that centuries ago, and he didn’t care. The second time, he wanted so badly to keep him and save him, and couldn’t say the right things. He can’t speak at all now. The Master steps forward, once and again, closing the distance by halves, like a wild animal. “Tell me a story, Doctor,” he whispers. “Tell me how you burned Gallifrey.”_ _

__The Doctor flinches back. “Not that.”_ _

__The Master snarls, completing the impression. “I know why, and I don’t care what you felt. Tell me _how_. That can’t be so hard.”_ _

__“It’s all hard.” But the Master’s asked for nothing, only words._ _

__The Master looks away into the dark. He speaks again after a moment, soft and resentful. “I used to build things, you know. I could have -”_ _

__“- You still can - “_ _

__“Once. Look around you, Doctor.”_ _

__He doesn’t have to, because there’s nothing. Nothing hidden in the night, no moons in the sky, no sun on the other side of the world. Not something you’d forget, when you put every other star in the sky. And so when morning comes... He nods._ _

__“Right.” The Master sits, so the Doctor sinks down too. He should have told the Master about the war, on the Valiant. But there was always going to be a better time, when the Master could understand. When he wouldn’t treat the Doctor’s nightmares like bedtime stories. Not long in, the Master does lie down. Head on the Doctor’s thigh, and the Doctor gives in to the urge to ruffle his hair, absurdly pleased when he only ignores it._ _

__The Master interrupts twice, once just to say get on with it. The Doctor digresses a lot more than once. Backwards to the worst of the Time War; forward to the Dream Lord’s trial._ _

__The Master keeps fiddling with the device, making it light up in different configurations. The Doctor decides that at least he’s not tapping his fingers, or risking the pool, or otherwise obviously in thrall to the drums._ _

__He lies back too, and tells the Master about Mars, about saving them, about Adelaide. The Master laughs. “I told you - always the women. I reminded you of her.”_ _

__“She was later. I reminded me of you.” The Doctor stops, more tired than he ought to be. Mourning the Master, mourning Gallifrey. Their dead world turning on its non-existent axis towards an impossible morning._ _

__The Master senses it too. Smiles, just slightly. “Thank you, Doctor.” He stands and walks away, back toward the Schism._ _

__The Doctor scrambles up, panicked into saying things he’d thought he’d gotten past. “No. No, it doesn’t have to be now. Not yet. Master!”_ _

__“What’s that?” the Master says without stopping._ _

__“Stop, please. Just stop, for _once_.” He doesn’t run; that’s the sort of futile, pathetic gesture he’d cringe to remember later._ _

__The Master turns and grins, madly - smirks, that’s the only word for it. “No. I won’t.”_ _

__And he spins, and pitches the Doctor’s blinking device into the pool._ _

__The Schism explodes._ _

__And the Doctor wakes up._ _


	3. Dionysium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleven, Harry Saxon, and a virtual pit of iniquity. Or, the part with the sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eleven/Simm!Master, after the Wedding of River Song. I stole the setting from the show "Caprica".

A woman falls, scream cut short. She had curly brown hair, and he doesn’t know her name. And it doesn’t matter. He laughs sharply when he realizes: it doesn’t matter at all. People come to this world to fulfill their worst fantasies, come here to murder or be killed. It doesn’t matter that they’re dead; it even wouldn’t matter if he were the one to do it. (And who’d know it’s him anyway; as soon as he realized what this place was, he put on a body better suited for it.) Almost like the real world, where people are dying and no-one remembers they ever lived. And there’s no-one in the universe to - 

“You don’t really want to do that.”

Which is when he realizes he’s holding a gun. There’s a gun - a different one - to his head, the voice low and familiar. The weapon is part of the program, but the voice isn’t, and he isn’t ungrateful for the detour. But still there’s a gun to the back of his head, and orders to raise his hands, and then he’s disarmed. The woman’s body is still crumpled in front of him, but it isn’t real. It’s not even a dream. He realizes he’s talking out loud, trying to explain to the man behind him, who can see the pool of blood spreading.

“Quiet.” The gun slides down, to his jaw. It might not be fatal at that angle, but it catches his attention. The man’s other hand at his waist, murmuring in his ear. “Of course it doesn’t matter. She’s nothing to anyone.” The voice is familiar, calm, certain. 

“But what was her name?” His hands fall limp at his sides, and he sways, held up by his - assailant? He has the off-switch, if he needs it.

“I can give you a name, if that would help.”

“I doubt it.” The man’s easing him down, awkward with only one hand, never moving the gun. He kneels, and the part of him still working trying to think what this, what function he serves or if he’s at all contemplated in this sick game. He’s still facing the dead girl. “Who are you?”

“What you were pretending to be, just now.” There’s a grin in the naggingly familiar voice.

The Doctor shivers. But the idea is so ludicrous it breaks the spell, a little. “You aren’t though. Could never be.”

The man is silent a minute. “You _wanted_ to be stopped. You want someone to reach in and pull you out of the rivers of blood you’ve spilled. To overlook that you’re dripping in it.” He’s shoved forward, suddenly, and can’t keep his hands out of the mess. 

“You’ve come to the wrong place, Doctor.” And the man circles round, and the Doctor has just enough time to gape at the doppelganger - in an immaculate suit and his eyes lit with rage - before Harold Saxon puts two bullets through his skull.

But of course it isn’t real.

* * *

The second the Doctor’s hearts stop trying to pound out of his chest, he logs in again. He watches the kill room for an hour, and sees nothing but anonymous carnage. Starts searching the rest of the place, randomly and then methodically. It’s bigger on the inside (ha) because there is no outside. An infinite pit for every bad impulse in the entire species.

And he could be anywhere. Could be anyone, in this melange of real bodies and improbable fantasies. Not too many in their own skins, the Doctor thinks. He is, now. It’s one thing to borrow the Master’s old body for... for a while, but this is business now. To find whatever remnant or memory of the Master turned up here. And then bring this place down.

He finally catches a glimpse, on a balcony two floors up. The Master rules from on high, he can’t help thinking it. Saxon waves at him, smirking. Impossible. He runs. 

The Saxon lookalike still leans over the rail, a full glass dangling from his hand, drinking in the view and the thudding bass. Turning suddenly to give him another warm, empty smile. “Welcome back, Doctor.” As though the Doctor hasn’t spent the last day hunting for him, over every inch of the Dionysium. “Do you like it? Of course you don’t. It’s only still standing because you’ve been looking for me.” He’s looking the Doctor over, thoroughly enough to make him squirm, eyes finally raising to meet his. “And here I am. Carry on.” 

“I want to talk,” he says, voice more measured than it could have been in life.

“You would,” Saxon says with a sigh. The Doctor thinks that the real Master would have played it up more. He liked the melodrama. “Not here.”

Harry Saxon’s idea of a place to talk is the middle of an orgy. The Doctor holds the drinks and tries not to look at much of anything while Harry invades a curtained-off area and evicts its occupants. The Doctor apologizes to them all, even as Saxon grabs his arm and drags him in.

It’s dark and cozy, a large bed platform with an array of candles at back and a heady spiced incense. The Doctor sits cross-legged, and Saxon falls back, stretching up to put his somehow unspilled glass up with the candles. 

“How did you recognize me?”

Saxon raises a hand, starts ticking off points. “The body you stole. The bow-tie. The - ”

“Bow-ties are - ” The man props himself up on one elbow and looks at him. So he goes on. “Did you make this - this place? Who are you?”

“Your precious humans are entirely capable of this on their own. They are human, you know. Long way from home, but they will turn up. You don’t know who I am?”

“The Dream Lord.” He tries to sound definite: it would be much worse if he weren’t sure.

“The Dream Lord,” the man echoes without inflection. They won’t get anywhere like this, so he climbs further in, to recline like a Roman at a feast. The polite mask collapses into what might be either concern or disgust. “Doctor, has anyone told you that you’ve gone completely mad? Martha Jones? No?”

“No, of course not.” He lies automatically. 

Saxon smirks and finishes off his drink, holds up the glass between them. “This is terrible,” he pronounces. “If you were wondering. Vision went fuzzy around the edges and my balance is six degrees off. But I remember everything, and you’re no more attractive.”

“Than what?” The parry is not his best; he wants know what Saxon wanted to forget, but won’t get anywhere asking that. And he wants what’s spread out in front of him.

“ _Your_ brain is obviously affected. Hallucinogen? That would be easy to program.” He leans in and kisses the Doctor. The Doctor opens his mouth, tastes liquor and smoke, and Harry pulls away first. “The sex here is quite good,” he adds, in that slow, hypnotic murmur. 

It makes keeping an eye on him simpler. Satisfies the program and all his instincts at once. The Doctor yanks him close again. “Please,” he whispers, and and feels the Master shiver in response. “Master, please.” Another kiss, hungrier, and the Master’s arms winding around him. 

Then the Master’s hand lands on flesh that ought to be covered in trousers, the Doctor yelps and jerks back. “Naked!”

A sharp grin. “Virtual. We skip past the awkward bits, and the sheets are always clean.”

“Yes, but - but -” There _is_ a sheet, and the Doctor yanks it up to his waist. 

The Master - it’s hard to keep thinking of him as Saxon when he never once noticed Harold Saxon - laughs at him. “Prude.” And he leans over to mouth at the Doctor’s erection through the sheet, the very thin... Until the Doctor pulls the sheet away himself, lets the Master suck him, lets him slide fingers into him, as he runs his through the Master’s short hair. He comes, shouting and messy. The Master chokes - a leftover awkward bit - and waves away his attempt at a kiss.

Pushes him down into the bed and fucks him, instead. The Doctor laughs at this turn for the utterly predictable. It’s even amusing when someone slips in to join them - until she reaches around to taste the Doctor, and the Master shoves her away with a snarled _mine_. The Doctor twists around, catches his wrist. Pulls it, unthinking, towards him, and Master brings his hands up. He realizes it won’t work a split second before the Master’s face screws up in frustration. 

He grabs for the Master’s hand again, hangs on despite the look of disgust leveled at him, and talks quickly before he can find another way to leave. “This is awful: it’s all lies. Can’t see you, can’t touch in any way that matters. You can’t be sure what I look like. You can’t even hurt me, not really.” 

“ _Leaving_ would hurt you. You haven’t changed that much.” But he’s listening, of course he is. Disappearing would be a hollow victory, if he couldn’t see the Doctor in pain. Whatever else he wants, he always wants the Doctor.

“Master. Please. Let me find you.” Lacing their fingers, carefully, tugging gently.

The Master bends, leans in. Then laughs, and the Doctor can feel teeth against his neck. “My dear Doctor,” he whispers. Then pulls back to display a perfect smile, eyes bright and blank. “No. But let’s have some fun, while we’re here.”

And after that, he’s harder, lays his claim in bruising thrusts that don’t hurt properly - pain being optional here. He rolls off after he finishes, and the Doctor realizes he’ll have to fend for himself. What he doesn’t want is one of them falling asleep and disappearing. 

“How do you look now?” He doesn’t pull the sheet up, lets the Master watch him stroking himself. “You’ve seen me, it’s only fair. If you are real.”

“There are rules about asking, you know. I’m not.”

“Real? No, I think you must be.”

The Master meets his eyes, smiles. “Fair. You’ll never finish, at that rate.”

“Hideous, then, are you? Rotting again?” 

“Melodramatic. You uploaded the body; I liked it; I took it.” He takes another kiss, breaking the Doctor’s rhythm, and then only rests a hand at the nape of his neck, conspicuously unhelpful.

“Tell me where, at least. Master.”

“I thought I was the Dream Lord. This node only serves half a solar system, Doctor, how hard can that be?”

“Things are - are bendy here, have you noticed? There’s something - And the Dream Lord hates me.” 

“Humans. Really. And _I_ hate you,” the Master reminds him. ”You only stop running long enough to destroy things. You collect barely sentient pets to idolize you. The bow-tie looks stupid - “ He twists it, half-choking the Doctor. “Do I need to go on?”

“Don’t stop. Master -” He’s close - so close begging comes easily.

The Master licks his lips, leans in to whisper. “You gave me a full year to torture your friends - destroy the world - for that minute of godhood. And you’ve run away again, Doctor. You’ve been lying every downward step in this hell-hole. Here you are, imagining old enemies like you enough to touch you; begging your worst enemy to remind you what you are, and getting off on it.” He is - he does, oh, sucking down air when the Master’s done with him and lets him go. Giddy with relief and absolutely spent. “Oh, Doctor, _look_ at yourself.”

He looks debauched, he knows. Spent and unfit for anything. But this isn’t real. “You’re right.”

“Obviously.” One point of contact, the Master’s hand at the back of his neck. 

“The sex is very good,” the Doctor says pointedly, because he won’t be admitting to everything.

The Master rolls his eyes, but all he says is, “I’ll know if you cheat. Ta.” He cuts out, leaving the Doctor alone.

“Don’t wait up,” the Doctor says in case he’s still listening. He saves when he logs off, downloads it to a drive small enough to hang around his neck until he can find a very safe place for it.


	4. But once is all it takes (rift)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor mended the universe, but that doesn't stop new glitches from emerging. Or very old ones.

### Entropy and Tentacle Monsters

In no time at all, the universe starts slouching back toward entropy. The latest flaw - the first anyone who isn’t a Time Lord would notice - turns up at the Blue Caves on Eirnos (a spectacular set of sapphire formations named by an unfortunately literal-minded species). A hundred years from now it wasn’t, but now it is, infested by tentacled bats with an acute startle reflex and interesting defense mechanisms. 

“Slime,” Amy announces once they’ve got the last one out of the Tardis control room. “Cold slime!” Her tone is a little more accusing than necessary, possibly because the Doctor ducked at the right times.

“You’re worse, you go on,” Rory volunteers. “Doctor, why did they all try to follow us here?” The bats had clustered on the outside of the Tardis, two and three thick. 

“The question is where they come from,” he muses, typing. “They couldn’t have evolved on this planet. Or any of the near systems, actually. Energy residue’s likely, it’s the only thing we all have in common. They knew we were travelers.”

“And they want to go home,” says Rory, with some sympathy.

“Right,” the Doctor cuts in. “There’s a new rift. A hole in space and time, and the bats came through. and can’t get back. We can’t do anything from here, but if we get to where it opened - ”

Amy slams her way back in, a flattering new-leaf green from the hairline down. “Doctor! You had better be able to fix this.”

The Doctor tries to turn his grin into a reassuring smile. “No problem at all.”

### No Problem At All

By the time Amy realizes he’s talking about the rift and not the green, he’s found a likely point of origin and Rory’s back from his shower as well. Splotchy. It’s not far from where he ran into the impossible Harry Saxon, and there’s always been something funny about this part of space. The Tardis lands them in a storeroom of some kind in a spaceship of some kind, good for breathing but bad in proximity to a rift.

That should crack open any hour now, so the least they can do is warn their hosts to clear the vicinity. The least he can do, rather. Amy refuses to go when he can’t guarantee the residents are completely inhuman, and Rory’s splotchy.

On top of which, the storeroom they’ve landed in is an armory, so the ship is military, which means touchy, difficult people with orders and plans that have put them right in the way. 

He’s almost pleased to discover, when he finds the command center, that it’s just one touchy, difficult - and absent - captain with a shipful of thoroughly cowed subordinates. 

“Does th - er - Commander Naxos know you’re here?” the least nervous of them asks. They’re all either looking sideways at him or staring openly, so he tries to look friendly and non-threatening.

“Oh, I’m just here to observe,” he says, observing. They do have interesting displays, some kind of satellite array. He waves his psychic paper at them. “Leave your commander to me. What’s the quickest way to find him?”

There’s a palpable drop in tension once he makes himself someone else’s problem, and he’s directed out into the corridor, to the left and two doors down. He thanks them, lets himself out, and turns right. 

His tour through the other storerooms (food, medical supplies, hand weapons, engine parts, bipedal robots, ship-weapons) ends when he runs into the crewman who’s come to round him up. A striking man, although on second look the Doctor can’t decide why. He looks like the rest of the crew: uniform, dark hair, space-pale skin. 

The Doctor flashes the psychic paper to back up his story about the surprise inspection, and the man’s face clears. “Oh. Of course. This way, Doctor Smith.” He taps in a code next to a locked door the Doctor had dismissed as probably an airlock. It makes a certain amount of sense to hide the more sensitive equipment, he supposes, for a certain mindset. He peers in, and gets a sudden hand between his shoulder blades, shoving him through. The airlock door slams just before he can wedge a foot in.

The Doctor stops the cycling, summons the Tardis remotely, and blows the airlock from the doorway, with a sonic screwdriver and no admiring companions to watch until the very end. He fills them in as the Tardis spins into the vacuum.

“Boatload of soldiers. The commander’s certainly a tyrant, maybe a pirate. I told him I was the inspector-general come calling, and he threw me out the nearest airlock. Even with papers!”

Amy takes the psychic paper and looks perplexed. “I might’ve thrown you out too,” she says and hands it to Rory.

Rory hurries to say: “But only because we know you.”

“But I’d only just... Naxos. They did call him Naxos, didn’t they, Amy?”

“Still green, Doctor.”

“It’s him, he’s back again. He’s not in the way of the rift, he’s here to open it.” He grabs the paper back from Rory, and winces. It says, in his own hand, in Gallifreyan: ‘Trust me, I’m here to help.’

### Here To Help

“Standing orders are to kill stowaways on sight, was that unclear?” And then he waves away the first gun pointed at the Doctor. 

The Doctor’s not standing still to be shot, checking console after console for the one with the kill switch he didn’t see earlier. He doesn't find what he's looking for, and turns back to the captain. 

"I don’t understand. It looks like just a power station. And a supply drop? If that's all you’re doing, then what do you need the rift for?"

"Supply depot for an invasion fleet. There’s no rift here, Doctor. There can’t be, that would -"

“We followed it. It’s opening, right here, right now.” They lock eyes for a beat. 

“All power to engines, no shields. Engineering, Navigation, jump when ready, emergency protocols; do not wait for further orders.” Naxos focuses on the nearest screen, fingers tapping. "The black hole converters in the station - shut those down, immediately."

The comm crackles. “Sir, there’s interference.”

“It's opening,” the Doctor presses. “How fast can you move?” The Master ignores him, but he’s seen enough of the ship to know. He tries again. “Would the Tardis help?”

“That old bucket. Yes. Possibly.”

### All aboard who’s going aboard

He races for the Tardis, the Master at his heels and irate over the new layout, hardly the biggest problem at the moment. 

“You aren’t adjusting for the recursive space,” the Master snaps.

“This is the outer fringe of a solar system, not a flowerpot. Don’t tell me you’ve made a recursive solar system.”

“Galaxy. Couldn’t go smaller, not with space-faring species.”

The Doctor adjusts, on the fly, for a galaxy set spinning into recursion by a madman. “How long? What species?”

“Your favorites. And Cybermen, but they made themselves human and then - there it is.

The Tardis ghosts, swings around, and draws power from the rift as she closes in. The Doctor grabs for the Master’s hand, a wordless plea for help.

He has, afterward, only flashes of the rest. Of the Master’s spasm of terror before he turns his attention back to the new rift. Amy Pond, looking fiercely at the display without understanding the first thing about it. Loosing the Master’s hand and lying on the floor, laughing and giddy. The Master looking down at him. “You have gone quite insane. Since no-one else has mentioned.”

But even so, he sits against a pillar, exhausted, and the Doctor thinks if Amy Pond weren’t there, he might kiss him. But the Master’s miles away now in every way, both hands flat to the floor and perhaps thinking about that time the Doctor said he’d keep him here forever. But all he says is, “So that’s how you closed the Medusa Cascade.”

The Doctor grins. “Not at all. Whole new thing, this.” 

“Showy bastard.”

“He is that,” the green girl says. 

The Master looks at him, not her. “Designer humans. Really, Doctor. Do they photosynthesize?”

“What? No, twenty-first century standard, nothing like that.”

Amy volunteers: “There were these tentacle...things. Like bats. Sticky tentacle-bats. That’s why we came to close the rift. And we’re Amy and Rory. If you were wondering.” The Master turns his attention back to the door.

Rory asks, in that slow thoughtful way, “what’s the chance we’ve ended up where the bats came from?”

The Master answers first. “Good. After you then.”

“Oh, I’m not having my Tardis stolen or blown up again, Master. You leave first. You’re closest to the door anyway.”

“I see that. I veto the tentacle planet.”

“ _Veto!_ ” the Doctor bristles, sitting straight up.

“No tentacles,” Amy seconds. “Somewhere else it is.”

The Doctor crosses his arms, and scoots back so he can lean against the console. Protectively, of course, he doesn’t need any propping up. “If you want to go somewhere else, you fly it.” 

“Someone has to keep between you and the door. Teach one of your pet monkeys.” Which is probably just the Master’s excuse for not getting up.

And he shouldn’t push, he knows. Take the offered inch. Hell. He launches himself across the space, never quite achieving upright, to grip the Master in a crushing hug. “They’re apes. You’re back. About _time_.”

“Of course,” he says, pushing experimentally at the Doctor’s shoulder, which doesn’t come close to dislodging him. “That’s enough, Doctor.”

“I’m glad.” And he can relax now, can’t he? The Master’s touching his hair and not not gouging out his eyes. They stopped the rift. They can keep the universe in order, the two of them. The last Time Lords in existence.

The Master closes his eyes, tilts his head back. “Don’t be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting borrowed from BSG/Caprica again, more or less.


End file.
